Milan Kadlec of Dukla Praha gave cycling lesson to the young generations once again as he claimed stage 1 of the Tour of Taihu Lake in Wuxi, China. The current Czech national champion, 38, proved the expectations of a bunch sprint finish to being wrong. He raced smartly at the end against Drapac’s Floris Goesinnen and Hong Kong’s Choi Ki Ho, who looked to have the win in their hands but watched each other too much inside the last kilometer.

“I’ve won a fair bit in my career but this is a very nice victory,” Kadlec told Cyclingnews on the finishing line. “We knew the reputation of the Tour of Taihu as a sprinters’ race,” echoed Goesinnen. “In that case, I had no reason to save my legs for a sprint as I’m not a sprinter. Only wins count but as we were expecting a bunch sprint, finishing third in a sprinter’s race is still a good result. When I attacked with 6km to go, I got chased down by the town teams that had three riders in the [11-man] breakaway: Hong Kong and La Pomme Marseille. One rider from Hong Kong [Choi] caught me. He didn’t cooperate but he attacked me. After that, I was not going to offer him the stage win.”

Kadlec, who rode for nine seasons in Italian teams – including two with Lampre –took the opportunity to come across, followed by Team Type 1’s first year pro Joey Rosskopf who is going to join BMC-Hincapie next year. “I was surprised by the character of the race this time,” the Czech rider explained. “Last year it was completely closed with only bunch sprints. Today it was the total opposite, so I tried to follow the moves as much as I could. With 40km to go, we made a decisive break.”

Kadlec was not wearing his apparel as Czech champion as his suitcase didn’t make it to its destination. He also borrowed shoes for racing. While many riders are tired of racing at this time of the year, the Dukla Praha squad is full of energy, just as it was last year with Alois Kankovsky winning two stages and Kadlec finishing tenth overall. “Unlike the others, we are at the beginning of our season,” he explained. “We are a military team and we get paid for racing mostly on the track. We’ve just done the European championship and we’ve got World Cup races and the world championships ahead.” Two of their number in China, Jiri Hochmann and Martin Blaha, have been crowned European champions for Madison.

A flat race like Tour of Taihu is perfect for their preparation for track events. The attacking racing style of stage 1 augurs a very interesting race one year after the total domination of Boris Shpilevsky, who was in a position to make sure that it would be a bunch sprint every day.

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